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Monday, October 26, 2015

Where Are The Most Herps in America? A Place Called Conecuh.

Introducing
a new publication from contributors to Living Alongside Wildlife! This
scientific “monograph” is packed with information about 105 species of
amphibians and reptiles of Conecuh National Forest in south Alabama.

I first met Craig Guyer’s students back
at my first national science conference in Indianapolis. Back then I was just
beginning my Master’s degree and didn’t know any students at my university who
did any field work of any kind, so I gravitated toward Guyer’s grad students.
We went out together and hollered at people on sidewalks from Scott Boback’s VW
van and I knew right away that’s where I had to be. I told them to clear off a
space in their lab for my stuff. It was just a joke but in a few years I would
indeed be starting my PhD at Auburn in Guyer’s lab. And they were probably just
joking when they asked if I wanted to come down to the Conecuh National Forest
in south Alabama in the winter of 2002 to help build drift fences. I needed to
build these structures for my own research just beginning, and I wanted to hang
out with them, so I agreed. Drift fences are long lines of metal flashing sunk
into the ground. On either end of the fence there are either pickle buckets
sunk into the ground or funnel traps. Amphibians and reptiles (“herps”) crawl
along the fence, rather than over or under, and simply fall into your trap.
It’s the most effective way to survey for them. But most people hate building
drift fences. It’s grunt work. But I can’t think of anything better to bring
people together.

I
met up with the gang on a steel-skied winter day. They started showing up one
at a time and we set up camp at the Rome bunkhouse. Rome is one of those wonderful
places you find in the South that appear on maps but don’t really exist. It’s
just a crossroads near the Solon Dixon Forestry Center. The jokes and drinks
started up early and we were immediately having laughs. Kyle Barrett was one of
the last to make it down, and somebody seemed slightly concerned that perhaps
he’d gotten lost. Roger Birkhead dismissed this immediately, saying “He’s a
Southern boy. He’ll find it.” Next day we were rampaging across the Dixon
Center property with Roger saddled to a big gas powered ditcher and the rest of
us digging with shovels and cutting wrist thick roots with loppers.

The air was
just right for this kind of work; cool and damp enough that soon we were
comfortable in our field clothes and even shedding jackets. The hard work was
interrupted by occasional treats for the naturalist: a drive down near the fire
tower to see the bogs where in summer Pine Barrens Treefrogs squawk but were
now occupied by small greenish Henslow’s Sparrows. Roger picked up and cut open
a Parrot Pitcher Plant—whose pitchers lie prone on the ground, and which Roger
described as “nature’s drift fence”—to reveal a thick glut of digesting bugs.
It was too cold to find many herps, and we had to make do with a Two-lined
Salamander found along the edge of Blue Spring (the one on the Dixon Center…not
to be confused for the one with the same name over near Blue Lake…which
shouldn’t be confused with Blue Pond). We scraped mucky rills in attempt to
find Mud Salamanders, a species that should be there but has evaded detection
to this day.

So
I was there at the beginning of what would turn out to be a ten year intensive
census of this small national forest in the middle of nowhere in the wilds of
southern Alabama. This place would turn out to be central to my career in a
number of ways: I got to know some of my best friends and colleagues there. I
met the Guyer lab in Indianapolis but joined the lab down in the Conecuh back
in the winter of 2002. It just took me four more years to actually become
enrolled at Auburn University. I met my lab mate David Steen at Auburn but we became
brothers down in the Conecuh in 2007, on that trip when we found a Queen Snake
at the steephead and didn’t properly voucher it. Mark Bailey and I met in
Chattanooga but we had our first real moment juggling a One-toed Amphiuma at
Pholeter Springs hooting like crazed rural Alabama elemetary schoolers. I met
Jimmy and Sierra Stiles at Mark’s place at the 2006 Southeastern PARC meeting
when they told me excitedly about documenting a Smooth Earth Snake for the
first time in the forest. I told them that I believed there could be River
Frogs there too, and still believe them now. I met Jim Godwin during the same
conference but under more hilarious cirucmstances—the first Gopher Frog I ever
saw was on a rainy February night out on the forest service road in front of
Salt Pond, when Jim drove up in one of his half-dozen old Toyota Land Cruisers
and pretended like he was a game warden about to bust me for “take.” I met my
eventual post doctoral advisor Tracy Langkilde and her students down at the
Conecuh (we would build drift fences together, too), and this enabled me to get
two summer’s worth of my own research done down in the forest, which concluded
in 2012 and bookended my involvement in the studies reported in our monograph.
My career trajectory and explorations of the Southeast gradually pulled me
south further and further south until it plunked me right down in the Conecuh.

And
the place is special in more than personal ways. As our new monograph on the herpsof Conecuh demonstrates, you can’t find a place of similar size in North
America north of Mexico with more species of herps. It has more than the larger
and much more intensively surveyed Savannah River Site in South Carolina. It may
have as many species than Apalachicola National Forest, which is over seven
times bigger than the Conecuh. The annual herp class field trip out of Auburn
would consistently get more than 40 species in a weekend. The Gulf Coast strip
from Mobile Bay to the Apalachicola is incredibly rich both in numbers of total
species and in those found nowhere else. And not just in terms of herps: it has
a bewildering variety of special plants, fish, birds, and other creatures as
well. It’s a precious place that doesn’t cross many people’s mind when it comes
to special American landscapes. Perhaps this monograph will help change that
perception.

More than this even, the Conecuh has
mystery. We’ve added something to our monograph that is rarely found in
scientific papers. To enhance the appeal of this paper for general readers and
visitors to the forest, we convinced the editor (and at least one of the
reviewers) to include “conservation essays”—where is really just a euphemism
for good stories. These are stories about our adventures in the forest finding
critters. They are sometimes funny, sometimes surprising, sometimes poignant,
and are intended to show the human side of science. More than a few of these
essays involve unexpected, serendipitous discoveries or fruitful searches after
long, hard days. Not only do these stories document the discovery of rare
species (One-toed Amphiumas, Mimic Glass Lizards, and perhaps a River Frog),
they also reveal the sudden pleasure of finding a new nook or cranny in the
forest we never knew about. Sierra follows an Indigo Snake to a secret pitcher
plant bog. Craig has a close call with an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. I
follow a clear creek through hanging gardens of ferns. These are the memories
we’ll always cherish, and we wanted to pass them on to you. Oh, and Mark Bailey
was present for Conecuh’s only documented Alligator attack on a human being, soyou’ll want to buy your copy for his story at least.

For
the next few days Living Alongside Wildlife will be featuring some of these
essays in a shameless attempt to generate interest in our monograph and in the
fantastic herpetofauna of Conecuh National Forest. We tried our best to
thoroughly describe the herpetofauna as a living, breathing community of
interacting species, and the manuscript is peppered with juicy natural history
information peculiar to the region. Our goal was to make our paper like one of
those great local “bird finding” guides that you should never go anywhere
without. There are color photos and species accounts covering all 105 species
known from the forest, along with graphs, tables, and figures about all kinds
of things. We cover Eastern Diamondbacks, Mud Snakes, Coral Snakes, Alligators,
Alligator Snappers, Green Frogs, Green Treefrogs, Squirrel Treefrogs, Pine
Woods Treefrogs, Pine Barrens Treefrogs, Pine Snakes (and maybe even Pine Woods
Snakes), Gopher Frogs, Gopher Tortoises, Pig Frogs, River Frogs, Chicken
Turtles, Sawbacks, three kinds of Glass Lizards, two kinds of Dwarf
Salamanders, White Oak Runners, Red Salamanders, Waterdogs, Two-toed Amphiumas,
One-toed Amphiumas, Sirens, Mole Salamanders, Mole Kingsnakes, and now, after a
60 year hiatus, the forest ruler over them all has returned: The Indigo Snake
is back. Enjoy!